


Blood Will Out

by thecloserkin (tabacoychanel)



Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Codependency, F/M, Sibling Incest, i was trying to write casefic and here we are, oops i accidentally wrote an alternate ending to the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-11 19:17:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20551349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabacoychanel/pseuds/thecloserkin
Summary: Gretel wrestles with being a witch. Hansel wrestles with being in love with Gretel.





	Blood Will Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jude_writes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jude_writes/gifts).

_i. this bitch and her scoundrel of a brother_

When the moon was full Gretel dreamed. She would wake covered in a sheen of sweat, shivering, hair tangled in a bird’s nest and absolutely ravenous. On those nights Hansel did not sleep. He heard her cry out sometimes. His instinct was to go to her. It was a knife lodged in his chest, the effort of staying on his side of the bedroll or the room at the inn or wherever they were; but he knew better than to approach her in that state. Once she had used a shoelace as a garrote around his neck and he had managed to knock her aside and stagger, wheezing, into the woods, but it was a close thing. In the morning she was horrified and guilt-stricken. In the morning he had a rabbit roasting over the spit for her. She had inhaled it, teeth crunching on skin and soft tissue and bone until there was nothing left except the blood dribbling down her chin, and Hansel did not think he had ever seen a more beautiful sight. 

Now when the full moon came he was prepared. He would set extra snares, buy or barter for eggs and milk, maybe a whole hog if there were any to be had. Cows were impractically large or he would have butchered one, slung it over his shoulder and laid it Gretel’s feet. It was meat she craved the day after a full moon. 

“It’s like having my own pet werewolf,” he teased.

She rolled her eyes. “If werewolves were real I expect you would, too. It’s all fun and games until your tame monster takes a bite out of some unsuspecting villager.”

“Do you feel the urge to take a bite out of anyone other than me, sister dearest?”

She cuffed him, and they spoke no more of it. It did not strike him as odd that her dreams came so regularly when her moon’s blood did not—he had no other women to compare her to. Oh, there were other women, to be sure; there were tavern wenches and dairy maids aplenty, but those liaisons were transient. He did not linger in their beds to braid their hair back as they retched into a chamberpot after downing too much ale; he did not bring them cold compresses or warm broth when they were doubled over from the pain of their irregular courses. For a season or two Hansel and Gretel had bided with an herbalist, a widow who lived at the edge of the forest, and then Gretel’s moon’s blood had flowed each month like clockwork. Betimes it happened that way, she explained, when two women lived under the same roof. 

The day they left the herbalist’s cottage Hansel said, “Seems to me your monthly visitor treads more lightly. A lot more lightly. Hell, you were cleaning the rifles—usually you can’t get up to _walk_ until the second or third day. Couldn’t we have stayed the summer?”

“And done what?” she wondered. “There are no more reports of witches in any direction for a week’s ride all around. Would you have us stay snug in that cottage while there is work to be done?”

“I don’t like to see you in pain, that’s all.”

She didn’t look at him as she said, “It’s better this way. The less regularly my courses come, the less likely I am to conceive.”

It felt like someone had punched him in throat. “To _what_ now? Are we talking about…are you even doing anything that would result in…”

“Not at the moment, but I have needs just like you do,” she reminded him impatiently. 

In that instant he couldn’t have dredged up the name of a single girl he’d ever tumbled. All he could think was that Gretel had needs and he couldn’t do a damn thing to satisfy them. He felt deflated. “I didn’t think you minded me having a bit of fun. I’ll stop if you want me to.” 

“No, no, it’s perfectly fine. I don’t mind. It’s just. It’s hard for me to have ‘fun.’ I think there is something the matter with me.” Hansel opened his mouth to dispel such an absurd notion, but she continued implacably, “One of us ought to stay focused on the work. We have a job to do. We can’t let anything get in the way of that. We can’t let any more children have their childhoods stolen away like we did.”

They had never gone back to see what had become of their parents, not in all the years they had been doing this. By mutual assent they did not speak of “before,” they swung wide of that entire quadrant of the map, and at times it felt less like being on the road than being on the run. Hansel knew they could not outrun the past forever, but he also knew that Gretel was not ready to face it, and he would have followed Gretel into the teeth of Hell. In Gretel’s book the crime of abandonment was second perhaps only to the crime of cannibalism, and only by a hair. After all, that old hag had not been fattening her _own_ children for slaughter. 

He too dreamed of the witch’s house, the sticky-sweet snap of gingerbread crumbling in his mouth and the hungry flames leaping up out of the oven. It was a trauma that would remain with him all his days. But _his_ nightmares had come upon him afterwards, along with the sugar sickness; they were each in their way the witch’s gift. Gretel’s dreams, though. The specter of Gretel’s dreams had plagued her ere the two of them ever laid eyes on that infernal gingerbread house. The dreams had come with her woman’s courses—just as their mother had foretold. Whether her foretelling had been a warning or a curse, Hansel could not say.

* * *

Hansel had nearly died of the sugar sickness. He was hungry no matter how much he ate, thirsty no matter how much he drank, fatigued no matter how much he slept. One day his vision grew so blurry he walked straight into a tree trunk, and when he came to Gretel was there, urging him to swallow some compound she dribbled into his mouth. He didn’t ask what it was or where she’d got it. He remembered the bitter bite of dandelion root well enough—it was one of their mother’s possets.

And it worked. It got him on his feet, and within a week they’d found a surgeon who knew of a cure. Not a cure, exactly; but it would keep his condition contained, this miracle injection that had been distilled far away in the city. And it would not come cheap. 

“Why bother making the trip? We can’t afford it,” he groaned.

“We’ll earn enough to afford it, by the time we get there.”

A flicker of alarm shot through him. There was but one surefire way a young woman could amass a mountain of coins in a short span of time. “How do you propose—“ 

“We will offer to rid villages of the witches that prey on them. For a price.”

He stared at her, dumbstruck by the audacity of it. “Gretel, we’re already clearing out witches’ lairs wherever we find them. We haven’t demanded any compensation.“

“People value a thing more once they’ve paid for it, don’t you think?”

“That may be so, but we haven’t any leverage to make them cough it up.” 

“You need that injection to _live_ and by all the angels and the saints, I’m going to get it for you. Whatever it takes.”

“Maybe … I don’t deserve to live. Maybe this sickness is no more than I deserve. I was greedy, wasn’t I? Gorged myself on candy. Ate and ate and ate and now I can’t keep any weight on nevermind how much I eat.” 

She said, barely a whisper, “It’s me that doesn’t deserve to live. I’m not clean.”

“What, just because you sleepwalk sometimes? Because you have nightmares? Come off it, Gretel. We both know I’m the useless one.“

She took his head in both hands then, pressed their foreheads together. “I cannot lose you,” she hissed fiercely. “I can’t, okay? This is not negotiable.”

Hansel swallowed. “You haven’t thought this through. Even if you go in there and agree a price with the sheriff or the squire or whoever’s in charge, who is to say they’ll keep their word once the deed’s done and the witch’s head on a spike? Who is to hold them accountable? Even farmers have cheated us when they paid us to help with the harvest. Look at us, we’re easy targets. We’re strangers—we’re orphans—there’s no one to speak up for us.”

She had an answer for that. She had an answer for everything, his Gretel. “I’ll set them against each other. Squire agains sheriff, merchant against miller. Where there are rivalries I will exploit them, where there are none I will create them. And once word of our exploits begins to spread, we’ll have a reputation. Nobody will dare cheat us then.”

* * *

_iii. burning is the best way _

In the city they found the apothecary they had been directed to, situated cheek by jowl with an armorer and a goldsmith. Indeed “goldsmith” was somewhat of a misnomer as there were fully as many cogwheel clocks and astrolabes in his shop as jewels or rings. The armorer was even better. The armorer carried _firearms_. 

Hansel and Gretel had never seen the like. There were blacksmiths and bowyers in the hinterlands, of course, but they dealt in blunt instruments. Hansel never knew that weapons could have a _purpose_ that was evident in every lineament of their design. If there was a purer joy in this world than taking a revolver apart and handing it off to Gretel to put back together again, he could not conceive what it might be.

They did not have the funds to order anything to specification on that first trip. On subsequent visits they returned laden with prize-money and bursting with commissions. In time they could afford even heavy artillery, which was Hansel’s real passion. It was a pain and a half to haul around, but it had the undeniable advantage of removing your enemies at minimal risk to yourself. Especially important when your enemy was hurtling toward you on a broomstick. 

Now when they came to town they brought apples for the armorer’s horses and slinkies and balls for his children. There was a wooden sign carved with their likenesses that hung above the door; for those who could read it announced this shop was patronized by Hansel and Gretel, Witch Hunters Extraordinaire, Personally Responsible for the Extermination of 600 Witches.

They didn’t find out about the fire until months after the fact. It wouldn’t have done any good had they been there. What could they have done to stop it? That’s what Hansel told himself. It happened so quickly it swallowed up that whole quarter of the city, and after, the guilds were slow to rebuild. Some said there was a curse. Hansel and Gretel stood in the wreckage of the armorer’s shop, knelt beside the pentagram that had been seared into the floorboards, and knew the rumors were not wrong.

Hansel wanted to scream. “How can we protect children from witches when children are _dying_ on our account?”

“We kill the witches,” said Gretel grimly. “We kill them all.”

* * *

_iii. evil is upon you, whether you will it or no_

With the approach of the blood moon Gretel’s dreams grew worse. They came on the new moon as well as the full moon; eventually they came every night. 

“You can’t go on like this,” he insisted. “You haven’t had a proper night’s rest in who knows how long. You’re no good to either of us in this state.”

“And if you lock me up in a room with a featherbed, I’ll sleep like a baby, is that what you think?”

_When you’re cut, I bleed_, was what he thought. He said, “I think something is happening, something big. You’ve seen the star charts. There’s a blood moon coming on, the same as there was the night our parents abandoned us.” 

“We don’t talk about that, Hansel. We made a promise.” Her jaw was clenched so tight he was surprised she was able to get any words past it.

“And why is that? What will happen if we do? Don’t you remember what Mother told us? She said, take care of your sister when the moon is full. She said that! She promised to bring you along with her to—wherever she went on the full moon. She promised to bring you just as soon as you got your woman’s blood. Gretel, don’t you think…”

“Our mother left us for dead. Our mother served us up to that candy-house bitch on a silver fucking platter. I am _nothing_ like our mother.” She was vibrating with outrage, taut as a bowstring.

“Then why do the dreams visit you like they visited her?”

* * *

It was Mina who showed him the truth. Hansel was not normally one for repeated assignations—for one thing, your chances of being found _in flagrante_ by an angry husband or father increased substantially; for another, you didn’t want the lass getting ideas. Mina was different. Not only was she mercifully devoid of interfering male relatives, she was the most _restful_ person Hansel had ever met. A man could lay his burdens aside when he lay his head on her bosom. And what a bosom it was. Generous, soft and yielding—just like Mina herself. 

Gretel’s endowment paled by comparison. Hansel would help her bind her breasts up before a fight, if she thought it needful, but elsewhere she was all hard planes and toned muscle. Nobody would have called Gretel soft. Which was just as well, since if any man had tried to lay a hand on her in lust Hansel could not answer for what he might do. The mere thought of it set his blood thrumming. This was dangerous terrain. He turned to tangle his fingers in Mina’s hair, a river of ripe wheat spilling into his palm. She brushed it every night, one hundred strokes without fail. Gretel was lucky to remember to take her boots off before bed; her braids were careless and artless and forever falling out, loose chestnut strands streaming in the wind when she rode ahead of him …

He should not be thinking about Gretel. He was here, with Mina. It was Mina before him, Mina in the flesh, and yet when he closed his eyes all he could see was the white column of Gretel’s throat.

It was hopeless. He told Mina, “I won’t be coming next week.”

“I should have asked you not to in any event. Next week is the full moon.”

“Ah. Any special significance?”

“It’s traditional to celebrate the Sabbat then,” she informed him serenely.

Hansel could not back away from her fast enough. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? You admit that you—that you’re one of them.”

“Hansel, you have known for months what I am. I have never tried to hide to it. Well, perhaps when we first met—but I did not know what kind of person you were then.”

“What kind of per—Mina, I’m a _witch hunter_. My job is to _kill_ you. How is it possible… I mean, I checked you. You were clean.” He didn’t understand how she could remain utterly unruffled, when by rights she ought to have feared him as much as he feared her. 

“Only the dark witches bear the signs,” she sighed. “They have power I do not have, yes, but it is a question of what you are willing to trade for it.” If he had been hoping she would roundly disavow the dark arts and denounce their practitioners, he was disappointed. 

“Why don’t you hate them?” _He_ hated them with every atom of his being.

“Had you been born a woman you would understand that in this world there are no good bargains. I promise you this, however: I do not practice the dark arts. Since I have welcomed you into my home I have made no effort to clear away the evidence of my craft, and yet you have remained willfully obtuse. You did not see because you did not wish to see. _That_ is the kind of person you are, Hansel. Now will you return in two week’s time, or will you wash your hands of me?”

“I—“ He should check her again. To be safe. He should tell Gretel about her. How could he possibly tell Gretel he’d been shacking up with a witch? He couldn’t do it. “This is a lot to take in. Let me think about it.”

“When you said you weren’t coming back,” Mina confessed, “I thought you were preparing to cut me loose.”

She was right. He was too much a coward to own it, so he temporized, “When the moon’s full my sister has nightmares, and I have to stay with her.”

“_Every_ full moon?” Mina demanded sharply.

“Since she got her woman’s blood,” he admitted. He had her undivided attention now, and she considered him thoughtfully. 

“Witches who choose not to celebrate the Sabbath, who let their magic lie fallow from month to month, find it very uncomfortable. Untapped potential within the body cannot build up without the dam burst eventually. It will force its way out, one way or the other. When the moon waxes so does our magic, and if the magic finds no conduit in the waking hours it will seek one during the slumbering hours. The easiest way to identify a budding witch is by charting the cycle of her nightmares, you see.”

Two things became clear to Hansel, and he did not know which was more frightening: That his sister was, without a shadow of a doubt, a witch. Or that he wanted her, body and soul. The knowledge was a knot tightening around his heart.

* * *

_iv. what happened to your face? who did this to you?_

They had the captive witch tied to a chair. She was not cowed. She spat at them, all venom, “Why don’t you two go fuck yourselves,” and every hair on Hansel’s arm stood up. The witch’s glance flickered between Hansel and Gretel, darted from one to the other and back again, and Hansel thought, _No. Don’t say it, nonononono please god don’t say it_ and she cocked her head to one side and declared, “No. No, better yet: fuck each other.”

He felt his sister stiffen and turn away. It was an appalling suggestion, and she was rightfully disgusted. He dare not look at her. He hardly dared draw breath for fear Gretel would pluck the depraved thoughts directly out of his brain; she had a knack for doing that. A wave of hot shame washed over him, and the knot within him constricted. He went to strap on the gauntlet. He could not let the witch’s baseless insinuations bungle the interrogation. _Not so baseless, are they?_

It was one thing to ignore the whispers that followed them from town to town. It was quite another to see his own darkest desires given lurid shape and paraded before Gretel to hurt her. _My first duty is to protect her_, he reminded himself. _I won’t let anything hurt her_, and he brought his gauntleted fist down on the witch’s face.

* * *

_v. your whore of a mother_

He didn’t tell Gretel what Mina had said. The truth that Gretel was a witch was all mixed up with the truth of his desire for her, and he could not divulge one without divulging the other. He could not bear to see her recoil at the knowledge. So he put off telling her, and then it was too late. In the house they grew up in they finally came face to face with the Great Witch whose territory this was, whose hand was behind this latest rash of kidnapped children.

The Great Witch was their mother. Hansel sought within himself for a spark of surprise, and found none.

She still wore their mother’s face. That was the hardest part. If she had appeared to them in her true form … and yet, her being evil incarnate did not make it less true she was their mother. 

She said, “Welcome home, my babies.” Her smile was a grotesque parody.  


She said, “What, no kisses for your beloved mother? But I’ve missed you so much. I’ve been frantic to find you.”

There were warring impulses in his breast: He wanted to lay his hand on a weapon, and he wanted to hold on to Gretel for dear life. He felt more than saw the flicker of her eyelid—she was thinking the same thing. They stood shoulder to shoulder, fingers twitching, a hair trigger away from springing into action.

She said, “Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a white witch who fell in love with a farmer. They had two beautiful children, and everything was as perfect as could be. The townspeople came from miles around for her miraculous cures, for she was the greatest healer in five parishes. Then one day there was someone too far gone for her to heal. Somebody’s child, somebody’s wife, it doesn’t matter. What happened next, you can imagine. The people turned against her—the very ones whose lives she had saved! They said she made sheep and pigs drop dead just by looking at them. They said she was the cause of every illness, the root of every pestilence. She was a blight upon the town and they resolved to burn her at the stake—her, and her family too.”

“They waited until the blood moon, for they knew that witches are at their most vulnerable when the moon is in eclipse. It is a time for great makings and great breakings. She knew what was coming—how could she not? She thought she could make them see reason. These were her friends, her neighbors! So she sent her children into the woods to keep them out of harm’s way. And do you know what happened next, children? The bastards _burned my husband to a crisp_ in front of my eyes. After that, what was the point? Tell me that: What is the point of holding to lofty principles, of limiting your potential, when the power is right there and you need only reach for it? White witch or dark witch, the rabble are not terribly choosy once they’re gathered outside your house with pitchforks.”

“I made a resolution of my own that night. I resolved never to be at the mob’s mercy again. Now as luck would have it, during a blood moon there is a potion that grants immunity to fire. The ingredients are esoteric: Twelve brats and the beating heart of a Great Witch. It need not be any particular _kind_ of witch—a dark witch would do just as well as a white one—but alas I am the only sister of that description in these parts. At least I thought I was, until I began to hear reports of a pair of witch hunters who were not susceptible to spells. And I found that very interesting.” 

Their mother was much closer now. She was standing at arm’s length and yet he could swear she had not taken a single step, and how had he not noticed there was suddenly a fire kindled in every grate in the room. “Did you know, my dear children, that the gift for magic is hereditary? Not only that, it is inevitable. Let it lie dormant—let the woman try to suppress it—and it will only surge out of her more viciously. You see, Gretel, there is no denying what you are. You are the daughter of a great witch. You are yourself a witch, you who have slain so many of your sisters. It’s only justice, don’t you think, that _your_ heart will be cause of their deliverance? Oh, and one last thing: that pesky shield that wards you against a witch’s spells? It doesn’t apply to the witch who cast it on you.”

They never stood a chance against her. If he was honest with himself, they wouldn’t have stood a chance even had they been standing in a thicket of rocket artillery and howitzer guns. She was their mother, and she was their nemesis, and in this world there were no good bargains.

If he was being honest, Hansel had watched the fight go out of his sister the instant she learned she was a witch.

* * *

_vi. you look like shit_

He dreamt of Gretel chained to a sacrificial stone: she wore a white shift, her hair unbound. He dreamt of rescuing her. He dreamt of possessing an arsenal so deadly he would never have to come within a hundred paces of another witch; he would simply blow her head off and walk away whistling. 

When he woke it was to a familiar grogginess and loss of sensation in his extremities. He was overdue for an injection. He registered this with clinical detachment, took in at a glance the bars of the cage that held them.

His head was cradled in Gretel’s lap. “Don’t exert yourself,” she warned. “They took your needle away.”

Of course they did. 

“Well, I finally figured out why they call me ‘that Gretel bitch.” Her smile was a tremulous thing. “It rhymes with witch.”

A snort burst out of him. She shushed him, admonished him to conserve his energy, swore to get his needle back. He thought about the first time he had been felled by the sugar sickness, and the posset Gretel had fed him, that had revived him. He thought about the pad of her finger resting now against his pulse. If he turned his head slightly he could press his lips to the ball of her thumb.

He threw all caution to the wind. “Kiss me.” Her eyebrows drew together in puzzlement. “For fuck’s sake you’re a _witch_. We don’t need the stupid needle, just kiss me like you mean it and I’ll be as good as gold. Come on before I die of old age.”

She didn’t need to be told twice. Good girl, his Gretel. 

Sensation blossomed in his limbs. Heat bloomed in his belly. He had held his sister in his arms a hundred thousand times but never like this, never like every touch left a brand upon her skin. She made a noise, a small breathy gasp, and the knot within him relaxed: he had feared she would flinch from him. But he knew her body as well as his own, and he knew when he’d struck a vein of need that ran deep. 

It was some time before they came up for air. He tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “You good?”

“I don’t know how I did that,” she said. “I don’t know who I am anymore.” 

“You’re my sister, and you saved my sorry ass. As usual.” It was disconcerting to see her so unmoored from her certainties, Gretel who was always so sure of herself and her goals. 

“But I’m a witch,” she repeated. “I knew there was a wrongness in me. I’ve always known it. I just didn’t want to look at it in the light of day. And now…Hansel, she says I’m one of them. She says she won’t sacrifice me. All I have to do is bring her the heart of a Great Witch before the blood moon.”

“Is she out of her goddamn mind? I hope you told her to go to hell.”

Gretel stared past him. “I don’t know what else I’m good for. I don’t know how you can bear to touch me. I feel like any minute my teeth will rot and my skin will molt into lava.”

“If that happens I’ll slather it in salves and unguents until it’s pink and rosy again. I’ll make you dentures to wear in place of your rotting teeth, if you like.” He squeezed her hand. “As for my being repelled by your nature … I think you have evidence to the contrary.”

“This is no jest, Hansel. I am her daughter. There is a stain in me.”

“I’m not jesting. You think I kissed you senseless on a _lark_?” He resented that she could misread him so.

“I think you tend to do the first damn thing that comes into your head.”

“Gretel, I have ached for you. You aren’t unclean or fatally flawed. I have seen every inch of you, and there is no part of you I do not cherish. No part of you that I recoil from.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “Do you remember that poor woman we saved from the stake, back in that shithole village? Well, she’s a witch. A real live bona fide witch, but a _white_ witch—not a mark on her.”

“I suppose you examined her thoroughly,” said Gretel drily. His heart stuttered, hearing the brittleness underneath, until the corner of her mouth twitched upwards. “I really have to hand it to you. You can’t even declare your undying love without confessing to an affair with another woman.”

“There is no woman for me but you,” he vowed. “There never has been.”

“Took you long enough to realize it,” she observed, but there was no heat in it.

“I never claimed to be quick-witted.” Indeed, when God had apportioned the wits between the two of them He had done so very unevenly. “But I am steadfast. I love you, and I set no boundaries on that love. You shrink away from people because you think yourself unlovable. Well I’m here to tell you that you are perfect. I need you to put your faith in me, if you have none in yourself.”

That earned him a smile. Her lips were ripe and swollen from his kisses. It came to him all of a sudden—not that she’d never been with anyone, but that she’d never lost herself in it, had always kept a slice of herself in reserve. She had never trusted herself wholly with anyone. She was too fearful of rejection. Yet she drove herself mercilessly and had small tolerance for her own weakness. He marveled that she couldn’t even discover she was a witch without outdoing everyone and being a _Great_ Witch. Always had to be the best, did Gretel.

“I think I always knew,” she said slowly.

“What, that you prefer me over every other man?” He grinned crookedly.

“To be fair, I prefer you to the women too. I knew from the beginning what I felt for you was wrong; I felt it too keenly. I thought it apiece with the rest of the wrongness in me. I thought I would remain empty and hungry forever. I thought if I didn’t die hunting witches I’d turn into _her_. I knew our mother was … what she was. I think deep down I knew the truth as soon as I got my moon’s blood. It took some doing to keep it from myself as well as you, however.” She delivered this speech earnestly, without rancor, her fingers still interlaced with his. 

He jerked away in shock and disbelief. “From the _beginning_? You mean we could have been having sex since we were _teenagers_?” Jesus _wept_. He stood and began pacing the cell. “All right, let’s go set some bitches on fire. I’m not dying in this pig sty. I’m not dying until I’ve fucked you six ways to Sunday, that I can promise you.”

“Jackass,” she said fondly, and this time the smile actually touched her eyes.

Sometimes Hansel wondered if things happened for a reason. He wondered if the villagers had not turned on their mother, if their mother had not turned to darkness, if Hansel and Gretel had not been turned loose to fend for themselves—would he have still loved Gretel the same way, without limits? He didn’t know. All he knew was that she was his, and she was precious, and he was done repressing everything that was true and ardent about himself.


End file.
